We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and SonicWall NSa based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are its flexibility and scalability. This solution is available as a license, which allows us to activate it based on the specific needs of the customer. This gives us and the customer a great deal of versatility and customization options."
"The solution integrates well with other Fortinet products."
"FortiGate integrates well."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"We like FortiGate-VM's IPS features and its ability to create multiple virtual firewalls."
"It is highly scalable because it has a mesh architecture that allows consistent policies."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are the ease of use, IPS system, application filter, web filtering, and email security. Additionally, there is a migration tool that other vendors do not provide. We only need to upload the configuration file to the tool, and it converts everything, except the passwords, and gives us the new configuration, which we can directly upload on the firewall. This migration process takes a maximum of 15 minutes."
"All the security features that are built into the product are valuable."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the firewalling, which is very good and the GUI which is very intuitive. It is easy to use, and provides great security."
"The solution can scale."
"Sometimes I have some queries, and the SonicWall support team resolves my queries."
"SonicWall's technical support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the control aspect of the solution."
"SonicWall's sales support is much better than other vendors'."
"SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line."
"I like that SonicWall NSa is a stable product. It's also a scalable product."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering."
"Sizing can be challenging for customers interested in using Fortinet FortiGate-VM."
"Fortinet support needs improvement. The response times are lackluster. Fortunately, the product is stable and we seldom have issues. Also, it takes months for them to deliver hardware when we order it."
"FortiGate's application load balancing has to be improved. They need to improve a lot on the load balancing and RAF side. They are far behind Citrix in that regard."
"Technical support could be better."
"Support could be improved a little."
"There is always room for improvement in any solutions, including Fortinet's FortiGate-VM. Although the solution claims to have a superior throughput compared to other OEMs, upon closer examination and comparison, there is potential for significant improvement in this area. In today's rapidly evolving technology world, it is important to continuously strive for enhancement and development, and I believe Fortinet can make significant strides in this direction for the FortiGate-VM."
"It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites."
"The user interface could be better."
"The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature."
"We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us."
"The security standards for space and point of view should be improved so that the solution deploys in critical areas."
"SonicWall NSa has occasional bugs, particularly during upgrades, and that's an area for improvement."
"One issue with the solution is that no authorization or authentication features exist."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"Customer support is severely lacking with very slow response times."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 27 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 26 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.8, while SonicWall NSa is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "Flexible with good cloud management and a straightforward user interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Easy to scale advanced threat protection solution with knowledgeable technical support, but has occasional bugs". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Netgate pfSense, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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